Friday, August 17, 2007

The Secret Behind Club Penguin's Success - MiniClip!!!!!

Tweentrends can seem to come out of nowhere. One minute, a company insmall-town Canada (Kelowna, BC, pop.150,000), releases a product calledClub Penguin. The next minute, their product sells to Disney for hundreds of millions of dollars.One minute, some garage nerds in England release a free massivelymulti-player online game called Runescape. A couple minutes later, theyhave 1 million paid subscribers and are generating 1 billion ad impressions a month.

In today's Internet world, where content is perceived as king, it'seasy to chalk that success up to the power of the product itself. Whilequality and good technology are obviously factors, an old fashionedsecret has been the key to both products' success: distribution.Runescape and Club Penguin both used the largely teen gaming portal, Miniclip, and it's 34 million users, to build their huge audiences.

Without Miniclip, it is likely that there is no Club Penguinphenomenon. The product launched in October 2005 and was able to ekeout a base of about 25,000 users. A few months later, the game was posted on Miniclip and experienced explosive growth. By September, the product had over 2.6 million users. Runescape's user base saw a similar, if slightly less dramatic, increase from a niche game to a multi-million user success.

With a core demographic of 10-24 year olds,Miniclip has built a portal with the power to instantly launch a youthbrand. What network TV was for The Transformers, so Miniclip has beenfor Club Penguin. Great products can travel virally, but the task is alot easier if the starting point is 30 million exposures. That's whatscale and distribution can do. After all, retail distribution -- themost proven way to educate consumers -- has driven Webkinz and the Barbie virtual world (reg. required). Online, Facebook's platformhas set the world abuzz not because of technology, but rather thepossibility of targeted distribution to a huge user base, albeit onethat is only about 60% of Miniclip's.

Miniclip might be the best place to spot the next t(w)een gamingtrend. Billed as the largest privately held entertainment portal in theworld, Miniclip is also one of the most attractive takeover targetsleft in all of Internet media.